Wanda Lloyd: Everybody seems to care about ASU

Jan. 11, 2013

Written by

Wanda Lloyd

Sitting with Montgomery Advertiser Publisher Sam Martin at the Chamber’s monthly Eggs and Issues breakfast Friday morning, we were ready to settle in and hear a speech by Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama’s 7th congressional district. Sewell was about to talk about the impact of her work in the last congressional session and her plans for the session coming up.

Then the text messages started coming from friends — on Sam’s iPhone and on mine.

“Your name was just mentioned on talk radio this morning,” one of my friends said.

“A caller said John Knight, Lois Russell, Ken Mullinax and Danielle Kennedy all went to the Advertiser to talk to you and Sam about the stories the Advertiser is running” about ASU. “Is this true?”

“True,” I responded by text message.

Meeting with people in the community is not unusual for us as many groups ask to meet with us.

In the past few weeks, amidst all the concern and conversations about local and national news and events, there have been stories like the looming fiscal cliff, the University of Alabama’s BCS championship, the horrific shootings in Newtown, Conn., and the reopening of the casinos at VictoryLand, to name a few. We even learned about the investigative outcome of allegations, uncovered by the Montgomery Advertiser, of grade changing in Montgomery Public Schools, and the school system’s plan to rectify that situation.

However, no story has occupied our time as journalists or as citizens of this community in recent weeks as much as events at Alabama State University after the board of trustees first voted to put Joseph Silver, president for two months, on administrative leave. A month later the board agreed to a costly settlement for him to leave ASU, with William Harris, the previous president, back at the helm.

Then came the news that Stacy Danley, the university’s athletic director who was on administrative leave for four months, was fired. Danley was open to sharing with the public the circumstances of his dismissal.

If there was ever any doubt that people care about what goes on at Alabama State University, the conversations in the past few weeks have affirmed that belief. It was difficult to have phone conversations with friends or spend time at a party over the holidays without ASU being the topic of conversation. Some calls have come from friends who are on staff at ASU, and their sentiments have been on both sides of the discussions.

Friends who live in other states call weekly to find out what’s going on. I even heard from a now-retired high school teacher of mine in Savannah, Ga., later a professor at Savannah State University, who called to scold me because he wanted to follow ASU on montgomeryadvertiser.com and he said, “You are charging to read stories on your website. Can you just email me some stories?” Savannah State, of course, is the university where Silver worked several years ago and where he apparently stirred up things when several faculty members were dismissed.

Martin, other staff members and I have been hearing from readers about our ASU coverage. On one side, they tell us “you are not doing enough to figure out what is going on over at ASU” or “let me tell you what I know that people are not talking about that someone needs to look into.”

On the other side, people tell us, “As usual, you folks are picking on ASU.” Or, “Why don’t we see the same kind of coverage about the University of Alabama or Auburn?”

We have received numerous letters to the editor and reader-submitted columns about ASU since late November. We have run some that supported Silver and some quite supportive of the University’s accomplishments. I personally have reviewed every letter, every column and every story about ASU in recent weeks, much more than my scrutiny of other kinds of stories. I know how sensitive this story has become. I understand the important role ASU plays in this community as an institution that educates, researches and supports Montgomery and the state of Alabama. We have run stories about these accomplishments, not the least of which is the fabulous $62 million stadium that opened on Thanksgiving Day.

In our discussions Friday and in response to critics and supporters of how we have covered ASU recently, Martin said this to me: “This is an ASU story — pure and simple. It is not about Alabama, Auburn or any other university in the state.”

When people ask, he said, “I let readers know that it is not our role (as a newspaper) to figure out what is going on at ASU. Our job is to report the news and I assure readers that we have and will continue to aggressively cover this story as it develops.”

Martin is right. Our job is not to make the news, but to cover it. We do invite and encourage contributions from the community on our editorial and op-ed pages, but we also look for balance — on those pages and in the news sections.

Whether ASU is being discussed in the Montgomery Advertiser, on talk radio or in private conversations, there is no doubt that people care about the university. And when the forensic audit ordered by Gov. Robert Bentley is completed — no matter the outcome — we hope ASU officials and others will be available to sit at the table with us again and discuss the results in detail. We believe our readers expect that.